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Mike Dunn moves from ESPN's NHRA broadcast booth to a leadership role with the IHRA.

Former ESPN NHRA analyst Mike Dunn named IHRA president

Appointment is latest step in sweeping changes for the series

February 9, 2016

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The International Hot Rod Association, in its aggressive enterprise to return to motorsports relevance, Tuesday named popular former driver/TV commentator Mike Dunn as its president.

His appointment by parent company IRGS+E is just the first of several weekly announcements that will spell out the vision for the sanctioning body as it undergoes a complete reorganization.

Dunn, who raced since 1976 as a teenager and earned 22 total NHRA victories in both the Top Fuel and Funny Car classes, has been a mechanic and driver. For the past 14 years he was the NHRA race-coverage TV analyst for ESPN. The IHRA record book lists him 1-1 in two IHRA final rounds. He grew up with drag racing as the son of “Big Jim” Dunn, one of the sport’s pioneers and still a Funny Car team owner.

So Dunn has been familiar with every aspect of drag racing, yet he described this step up to sanctioning-body management as “an interesting process.”

It’s one that IRGS+E started in December, after the NHRA dropped ESPN as its broadcast partner and didn’t invite Dunn to make the transition to Fox Sports. Dunn emerged as the choice from a pool of three finalists.

Said Dunn, “When Chris (Lencheski, IRGS+E CEO) called me up and wanted me to be president of the company, I kind of wondered why he wanted me to be president. Then we laid out his plan, his business model for the company. I looked at it, and the key thing I liked about it: he has a plan, and we’ll get into it more as we go along in the course of the season, to get more eyes on the product from a global standpoint, also nationally, also a younger demographic. When I read it, I said, ‘You know what? I think this has a pretty good chance of working.’ ”

Lencheski made it clear Dunn was tapped because of how committed he was to the company’s program.

The NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series is moving.The drag-racing associaton announced on Wednesday that it was ending its 15-year television run with ESPN and is moving to Fox Sports starting in ...

“It’s not so much that Mike comes in and he’s a figurehead or just a face, because frankly, there’s not a person we couldn’t have hired with a checkbook,” Lencheski said. “It’s, ‘Mike, do you believe where we’re going matches your vision of where it could be if someone were basically starting from dust?’ ”

He said in 10-15 hours of conversation, the subject of salary never came up.

“If I didn’t buy into what we were doing,” Dunn said, “it didn’t matter what the money was going to be.

“If I would have gotten call (saying),’Hey, we want to make you president. Here’s what we’re going to pay you to just do your job,’ I wouldn’t have taken the job,” Dunn said. “I realize through racing all these years you have to have a good team behind you. You have to have a plan. And you have to be willing to execute that plan and also realize at certain points you’re going to hit a snag and you’re maybe going to have to re-adjust that, which is what’s going to happen here. It is a good plan, but it’s not going to be perfect, and it’s going to be tough to get to certain points. But that being said, I still think we’re going to be able to do it.”

He said the open-wheel example of the IRL’s tug-o-war with CART for racers, fans, and sponsors weighed on his mind: “Say we do this project and we end up just diluting the whole sport -- we take too much talent away and we’re fighting with the other association, trying to get market share in the United States, and we end up like the IRL, I don’t want any part of that.

“But the one big thing I liked,” Dunn said, “was . . . the fact that we’re going to be in our own market and we’re also looking to go global, which needs to be addressed. After I saw the plan, I realized, ‘This could actually help the entire sport of drag racing.’ This plan addresses what is best for drag racing: getting more people involved, getting a younger demographic. It’s going to be a little bit different, but . . . it’s all about drag racing. We all love the sport, and the fact that we can have more people see it, if it helps the entire industry, I’m OK with that. I just want to see drag racing grow, period. And IHRA, for me right now, is the vehicle to do that. I think it’s a pretty good plan.”

Dunn said during his 14 years in broadcasting at ESPN, he always framed his remarks as NHRA coverage analyst in the context of what’s beneficial and appropriate for the sport.

“It was never about the sanctioning bodies. It was always about what I felt was best for drag racing, maybe sometimes to my detriment. Maybe that’s one reason why I’m not over there. But it doesn’t matter -- I don’t regret ever doing that,” he said. “We are promoting drag racing. We’re not anti-NHRA. We’re not in competition with the NHRA. We’re not anti-PDRA or anything. We are pro-drag racing. We’re just looking at this as a different way to get the sport out to a whole new audience.”

IRG-SE’s broad-sweeping initiatives for the IHRA include a 2017 return of the Top Fuel nitro-headliner class (the Dragster-1, or D-1, Series that’s an umbrella for five or six categories). Also planned are an NFL Combine-style event to discover and begin developing younger talent, pursuit of top media and corporate-communications leaders, global expansion, strong racer purses, reaffirmed commitment to sportsman racing, a TV package among other media platforms, and a business office in Manhattan. Lencheski introduced the revolutionary concept of revenue-sharing with IHRA’s racers.

Changes won’t be immediate. They’ll unfold during the next four years, both Lencheski and Dunn indicated, with 2016 being what they referred to as a “bridge year.” Lencheski said, “We are in no hurry to fail.

“When you look at this sport and the way that we do, sitting from the perspective of an investment company, you have to put a racer-first mentality,” Lencheski said. “That led me to suggest to our board that we needed to not be an outlier any longer in the business of drag racing. This company lost millions of dollars and not just last year . . . millions of dollars for the last several years. So that definition of insanity, of effectively trying to do the same thing and expecting a different outcome, was something the board looked at. It isn’t a drag-racing issue; it’s a consumption issue.”

Lencheski spoke of bringing back nitro-powered classes in “an entirely new structure” that will, he said, be “disruptive” to the industry but wildly popular with the fans. He talked about revenue sharing for racers: “If you’re in our Top Fuel structure, you’re part of the future revenue of growth of television and licensing. That is from Day One. If you are spending that sum to invest with us and running the amount of races that are required and participating in our contingency program, yes, you should be a partner. And to be a partner, you need to share that television and licensing revenue going forward. So that is definitely happening.”

Dunn is the second NHRA Funny Car driver to lead the IHRA. Billy Meyer, who won one IHRA Funny Car championship and eight races overall, purchased the IHRA in the late 1980s.